By Florence Fabricant / New York Times News Service
A buffet is the driverless car of entertaining. Guests help themselves to dinner, no precisely measured settings required, and when all is well-programmed, the host rarely has to grab the wheel.
It’s how I often entertain. But it requires planning. I always see to it that I have the right pots and platters, and enough plates, glasses, flatware and generous napkins for the head count on my list. I don’t consider paper or plastic to be an option.
If there are too many guests for my table, I can guarantee seating to accommodate everyone, with side tables or coffee tables providing a place to park a plate and a glass. And we put our coats on the bed to free the hall closet for guests’.
My main course choices are tours-de-force—never something like a spiral-cut ham but dishes that require a crowd’s appetite and offer a varied spread of ingredients. These classics can usually be prepared mostly in advance and reheated just before serving.
A good example is choucroute garnie, several kinds of sausages and cuts of fresh and cured pork on a bed of sauerkraut, with boiled potatoes and an assortment of mustards alongside. I’ve sometimes made a duck version with grilled magret and duck sausages, confit and prosciutto along with crisply sizzled strips of duck skin. If vegetarians are expected, steamed vegetables, like turnips and carrots, or even grilled cauliflower, can go along with the potatoes.
A grand aioli of poached seafood and vegetables is another option. Others are a moussaka with a collection of Greek side dishes or a big mushroom lasagna, scored before baking to make it easier to serve. Paella works well, too. Make two: one with seafood and sausage, and the other just with vegetables, including leeks, mushrooms, cauliflower, eggplant and peppers.
My most recent undertaking was the signature dish of Fat Rice, a clever restaurant in the Logan Square neighborhood of Chicago, where the cooking of Macau, across the straits from Hong Kong, is given an inventive workout. Arroz gordo, or fat rice, suggests a paella, no surprise considering that Macau was a colony of Portugal, a country that shares many culinary traditions with its neighbor Spain.
The restaurant’s bright, graphic cookbook, The Adventures of Fat Rice, by the owners and chefs Abraham Conlon and Adrienne Lo, with a former sous-chef, Hugh Amano, includes the total GPS for navigating this dish: deliciously seasoned rice studded with bits of duck and sausage as a bed for chicken, pork, prawns, clams, mussels and eggs. I gave it a turn on my buffet over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Tackling an unfamiliar recipe for a party is the last thing I would advise a home cook to do. But for me, the siren call and challenge of arroz gordo was irresistible.
There are a number of discrete components in the recipe that can be prepared separately and sequestered in the refrigerator, or, like the chicken, made a week in advance and frozen, needing just a quick last-minute reheat. As with many of my choices for buffet entertaining, this approach simplifies the process. (For the recipe, see https://goo.gl/JCs5lI.)
Read your master recipe closely, figure out what’s a practical approach for you, devise your own shortcuts and develop your shopping list as you go. Be assured that your showpiece with all of its components will be stunning to behold.
Pulling off this production number did call for a few compromises with the original arroz gordo recipe, like substituting prepared duck confit for Chinese salted duck legs, and eliminating exotica, like Filipino cane vinegar, red yeast rice and fermented bean curd juice. Plain hard-cooked eggs with a dusting of chili powder stood in for the tea eggs, and, in place of the stuffed jumbo head-on prawns, I used large shrimp rubbed with some of the spices, with excellent results. For another occasion, I would just serve those chili shrimp.
The rice was another issue. The method of preparing it was unlike any I had ever tried, so I gave it a test run, using just a cup of rice. It worked. Conlon and Lo explained that the cooking method, parboiling then steaming, is one that’s often used for making Indian biryani dishes.
There should always be a big salad on the buffet—but one with greens in pieces small enough so guests do not need to cut them. Alongside the arroz gordo, I assembled a copious bowl of butter lettuces with orange slices, avocado, slivered red onion and cucumbers, tossed in a simple sherry vinegar dressing. Guests should serve their own drinks, as well. Put out glasses, ice (keep extra bags in the freezer), water, soft drinks and mixers, juices, wine, beer, spirits and a cocktail shaker, and let guests have at it. Or pare it down by just offering wine and water. The Fat Rice recipe for sangria, made with sturdy Portuguese red wine, was an excellent quaff alongside the arroz gordo, though beer and Portuguese wines could also be offered.
As for dessert, options include platters of fruit, like seasonal clementines, grapes or pineapple wedges; sweet finger foods, like cookies, tartlets or slices of cake; or a dish or two of fine chocolates.
After-dinner coffee and tea is where the driverless car breaks down. Regular? Decaf? Black tea? Green tea? Herbal? Sugar? Sugar substitute? Honey? Milk? Nondairy milk? Lemon? The best approach is to be ready to set up two large (four to six cup) French presses or drip machines, one with decaf and one with regular. You will need a generous kettle for water. Also have several kinds of tea bags available. Hope for the best.
And now for the final reckoning: the cleanup. Be sure your dishwasher is empty before the doorbell rings, and rope off a portion of kitchen counter for dirty dishes or, failing that, at least have an empty milk crate or two on the floor with a mat or a sheet of plastic underneath to receive the dishes.
When it becomes evident that interest in the food has worn down, it does not require much effort to pile up dirty plates and silverware and take them to the kitchen. Glassware, too.
Do your best to avoid having guests pitch in. You will deal with the debris after your guests have gone, and you’re still powered by their awe and gratitude.